Comments

$200,000,000 on highway improvements? Try $6,426,161,783.49 on education! I understand that the schools don't want to take it on the nose, but education is the single largest portion of the state budget (24%) and it would be impossible to balance the budget while excluding their entire budget. The next biggest portion of the budget is "bond service", followed by "Kansas Health Policy Authority", social services, and KPERS. Each of those is difficult to cut, as well.

I believe that that 200M was also the result of a specific bond issue for transportation, which means that it couldn't be used for ordinary education operating expenses.

I don't know all the details of the cuts (haven't read through them), so I don't know that I support them. I merely suspect that the 200M for transportation isn't the item to focus on. Just my $.02

SH: 5,589,549,135 is a more accurate number (KS State Dept of Education, 2009-2010 totals.) Because the funds are complicated by Federal money and legislative rules as they have monkeyed wih the the formula over the years, and because the district reserves are often misunderstood, the numbers are somewhat fungible. The reserves are important for paying bills on time and making payroll, particularly when the state withholds some of the monthly payments due to cash flow. Simply put, Kansas general fund budget is about 66% schools and higher education. This is pretty typical for many states and why we have such a well-educated populace in most states. You can find a few states that don't spend as much on their K-12 systems, Mississippi, for example, but I doubt most people would hustle on down to enroll their children there.